Loretta Sanchez Nightmare: Kerry, Viet-Nam & Garden Grove
The LA Times reported today that the cities of Garden Grove and Westminster, home to large numbers of Vietnamese refugees, are at the brink of banning all city contact with the Communist regime in Viet-Nam -- to the point of not allowing police protection for such visitors, should they be so stupid as to come.
"We don't accept the communists anywhere," said Garden Grove activist Ky Ngo. "When we fled our homeland, we risked our lives to escape communism…. We want nothing to do with them."
Noting that the mere display of a Vietnamese flag in a video store in 1999 was enough to prompt a months-long demonstration, city officials say they hope to effectively deny sponsors of a Hanoi delegation any city cooperation — including police protection for visiting dignitaries, which would be necessary in a community where political friction often turns physical.
The article goes on to descibe various free speech issues and whatnot, but it avoids an interesting political question: The local Congresswoman is a Democrat who may have a problem with the presumtive Presidential nominee's lead coattails.
Alone among all possible Democratic Presidential candidates, John Kerry's position on the Viet-Nam war is crystal clear. He called the effort to defend Viet-Nam from Communism as a series of "war crimes", and did so on television. Surely there are clips. This will not play well in Little Saigon, given the numbers of
new citizens there who bitterly regret the loss of their homeland. As the Times article reports, supporting the Vietnamese Communists is political death in Garden Grove -- too many people buried too many other people for it to be otherwise.
Garden Grove's congresswoman, Loretta Sanchez, has a
district that is 15% Asian and 65% Hispanic, and includes much of the Orange County Vietnamese community. Since large numbers of these Hispanics are not currently citizens, the numbers are closer than that, although only a Hispanic candidate has a hope of winning.
In 2002, Sanchez won re-election with 60% of the vote against another Hispanic-surnamed candidate. While she has advantage in name recognition and Democratic registration (48-34%), the district is not as lopsidely Democrat as some. Additionally, Garden Grove has 18,000 registered Democrats (a 42-39 Democrat split), some of whom are Vietnamese.
It will be interesting to see just how much distance Ms. Sanchez puts between herself and Senator Kerry, and how well President Bush is received when he comes to support Sanchez's (Hispanic) Republican opponent -- which he will surely do as Sanchez is a permanent resident of the Republican to-do list. This one could be a surprise, despite the gerrymander, if the Vietnamese community turns out
en masse to reject Kerry.
Posted by Kevin Murphy at April 28, 2004 10:59 PM
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